Jim Marks

Let’s not beat about the bush. I really don’t want to talk about tea this week. I barely even want to drink tea.

I ran out of big tins when my TG order came in, and the Pai Mu Tan is so leafy that it wouldn’t fit into my biggest tin, so there’s extra still in the pouch. I’m trying to use it up before it gets stale, and that’s the only reason I’m drinking this today.

Now get off my lawn.

SECOND STEEPING:

This cup is more bold/less soft than the first steeping, but surprisingly the notes are nearly the same. I expected a second steeping of a shaded green to be a complete disaster, but this is a very good cup of tea. A teensy bit bitter, but nothing unpleasant. The green veggie notes are more pronounced and the non-green notes have faded, but this tea started off with such a good balance that this is not a problem.

The dry leaves of this tea have some very unexpected high brightness to them.

The wet leaves are powerfully dark green, but not muddy.

The cup is a vibrant yellow green color and smells more like the dry leaf than the wet.

The low temperature and extremely short steeping time means this is a tea about which one ought be paranoid about over-steeping by even 15 seconds, let alone more. This stuff will get into kale and kombu territory quickly, I think.

I seem to have timed it right, because the cup is surprisingly soft, but not weak.

This is one of those teas that makes you want to act like you’re in a Japanese movie for the whole day. Something meta-physical with deep symbolism in the cinematography. Traditional tea ceremonies juxtaposed with neon loglo and racer motorcycles. Seedy night clubs and Shinto shrines. You do everything in swaggering slow motion in a slight drizzle, but are kept centered and focused on your task by the carefully wrapped flask of this tea you always have with you. Some things in the land of the rising sun will never change. A flock of birds startles across the sky.

Baby spinach in a lemon vinegar, fresh hay, and something almost like candied ginger without the bite.

The dry leaf smells like warm fruit in a humidor.

The wet leaf, I kid you not, smells like beef, brown gravy and egg noodles.

The cup smells like brown beer. It is not as dark as yesterday’s golden pekoe, but is certainly closer to amber than to goldenrod. Let’s call it chestnut?

This is one of those teas that is too open, in dried form, to measure by volume, and so there’s a chance I didn’t use enough, but I actually felt like I might have put in more than I needed, really. The opened wet leaves take up about 1/3 of the pot, which with big, full leaves, is about normal for me. This may be a tea that is just all in the nose not on the tongue.

The cup tastes very gentle, hence my concern about enough leaf. A mild roast and dried fruit in the sun. Like trail mix on a hike, sitting on a big, dark rock on the summit. Old, weather worn, but solid, and full of dormant energy. This tea fits today very well. A bit overcast with storms on the way, and a long afternoon of quiet, somber reflection.

Now, I will confess that a week’s worth of singing for hours every night in a church full of incense has made me rather congested. So I could be completely wrong about all of this. ;-)

Also, I discovered that people are willing to take even tea too seriously, after thinking just yesterday how nice it was to have a social networking site where people didn’t go out of their way to pick fights with you. So much for that. If you find me reticent to interact, don’t take it personally. I’m really, really burnt out on this kind of thing and had hoped to just have some fun over here.

THIRD STEEPING:

As feared, this steeping looks great and smells great, but is quite weak. Not the tea’s fault, of course, not all teas are meant to last this long. There’s nothing wrong with what I can taste here, I can just barely taste it.

SECOND STEEPING:

Today has been insane. So it took several hours to get to my second steeping.

I am putting 2:30 for time, but that’s a guess. I set the timer for 2 minutes but it took time to set up the pour and make the pour. So it’s a bit longer than 2, but not 3.

The brew is again that deep amber honey color. The leaves still have the same aroma, amazingly enough. So does the cup.

Wow. Completely different cup from the first steep. All the astringency is gone. This is a soft, subtle, open, earthy cup with just only the most lingering hint of anything living (call that green, floral, fruity, sweet, whatever it might be, as opposed to dead things which are earthy, nutty, roasted, &c).

This is a really delightful cup of tea, but it leaves me apprehensive that a third steep will be weak and insipid or bitter and harsh. Worse, both.

Given that this tea almost looks like gun powder green when dry, I was extremely dubious about the two minute steep that TG recommends.

The color of this dry leaf is the kind of thing that makes you “get” why people become obsessed with amber jewelry. You know, the real stuff, the gnarly old stuff with four million year old mosquitoes fossilized in it. The stuff that looks like you live in a world of frozen honey.

The nose of the dry leaf evokes a similar sense of a slowly oozing, encompassing world of honey, and yet, not sweet.

Despite my concerns, the two minute steep produced a deep, dark brew. The color is like amber buckwheat honey (seeing a trend here?)

The nose on the brew also immediately makes me think of buckwheat honey. Also the tiff, sourdough flat bread you get in Ethiopian restaurants.

And yet, the notes on the tongue are not sweet at all! Astringent without being bitter, again, that tiff sourdough tang, not malty, almost hoppy, like an IPA or hefeweizen.

Given the short steep, I expect later steeps to open up some more subtle notes. I just hope I got all the water out of the pot into my cup so the leaves aren’t sitting there oozing bitter tannins on me.

For being a “mere” GOP, this tea has a lot going on.

Btw: The batch I got is clearly nothing like the batch that “teatimetuesday” got. Even the dry leaf looks nothing like what is in his photos. In fact, his photos don’t match the website photo, either, which makes me wonder if he got an off batch.

SECOND STEEPING:

This steeping is a bit weaker (duh) and much less dusty/dry. All those images I mentioned before are there, but they have been softened by an emerging dried fruit, I want to say papaya. You know, that kind of chewy, dense fruity sweetness that seems like it should get totally overwhelming, but never quite does? And it isn’t all wet and sloppy like fresh fruit is.

Wow, I’m turning into a total nut ball trying to talk tea.

This was one of my “go to” teas when we were fortunate enough to live in Chicago and frequently be in the neighborhood of the TeaG retail shop on State St.

Unlike most white teas, this is not a sweet, floral tea. This tea makes me think of very dry, brittle autumn leaves, the inside of a barn that has soaked up an entire summer’s worth of sun (old hay, dust, they way hot, dry boards smell), and the pie judging tent at the 4H fair.

This is actually a tea better suited for an unexpectedly cold, blustery day than for the explosions of spring, but I liked it so much in Chicago I had to include it in my order.

One thing to be aware of, the leaves are not rolled. At all. So this tea takes up a LOT of room, while dry. I bought 100grams and it doesn’t fit in the tin I can usually get 250grams of tea into.

SECOND STEEPING:

I used only 8oz of water this time, to the same leaves. Still 70c temperature but bumped to 3 minutes instead of 2.

The result is much more what one would expect, so I think I just flooded the first batch. 2 minutes 30 seconds might have been better, though.

The notes I gave before still apply, they are just much more present in the cup this time. There is a creeping bitterness here that is not unexpected in a second steeping.

I received a small sample of this tea with my recent order.

Even though I used a fairly small pot (600ml, roughly 2 and a third cups) I think this sample wasn’t enough leaf for that much water. The steep is a bit weak, and I’m blaming the water to leaf ratio, not the short steep time or water temperature. I can taste that the notes are correct, just not as present as they should be.

This is one of those bright, Chinese greens that hews more towards fresh hay than grassy. I want to use trite words like floral or sweet, but they’re wrong. I just want to use words like that to emphasize how completely unlike a Japanese green this is (which is what I usually drink) and also how much unlike a roasted Chinese green this is, despite being pan fired. It is really more like a peony white tea with a bit of a fresh hay rather than dry hay flavor to it (that greenness vs. whiteness thing).

I learned yesterday that there is such a thing as “yellow” tea, which attempts to catch the health benefits of green tea but with the flavors of white teas. Apparently a vanishing art due to limited market and expensive processing ~ much tea is now sold as “yellow” that is actually green but is very yellow-esque. I think a less reputable seller could sell this Mao Feng as a “yellow” tea. It really is straddling that fence between white and green.

I wish I had more so I could steep it correctly. Maybe I will pick some up in my summer order.

Sigh… my big shipment from TG arrived this evening, and I’m trying to avoid much if any caffeine this week. Oh well.

This, to me, tastes pretty much like all herbal teas taste. Call me a snob, but to me they all taste the same, and this is how they taste.

But I am fighting off a cold, so here I am.

I used the pyrex technique again.

The leaves open up completely. It looks like you could reconstruct a tea bush from all the pieces.

This comes out much softer this way. The resulting cup is not weak or boring, but the tea tastes less like an oolong and more like a white tea; albeit a very forceful white, if it were one.

I really like it this way.

I’ve been reading this crazy serious tea blog, recently, and I noticed that the author doesn’t steep in pots, he steeps in wide, open bowls. Well, I don’t have hand made, local clay, wire fire glazed tea bowls. But I do have huge, wide, Pyrex™ measuring “cups” that are at least very open and heat resistant. So I have been trying to make tea in those and see how that goes. If nothing else, the clean up is much easier than a tea pot ;-) I have, in the past, used my spherical Bodum™, with the plunger arrangement removed, for this purpose, but the glass is so thin I find there’s a lot of heat lost even in just a couple minutes, and if I’m doing a 15 minute pu-erh steeping, the water can be down to drinking temperature by the time the steep is done. The Pyrex™ is much heavier and should hold the heat better.

It could be completely psychosomatic, but this genmaicha seems to have “woken up” substantially from this steeping approach. I can taste a lot more of the deep green of the tea underneath the very strong roast of the rice which I have mentioned in the past that this variety has. Usually the roast completely overpowers the actual tea, but right now I think I can taste both about equally.

I have also done two steepings of the decaf Darjeeling from TG with this method and the results seemed much bolder, as well.

Brewed this up with a lot of leaf, tonight, and it was good and strong, but it needed a splash of lemon ~ which I realize is heresy, but there it is.

No notes yet.

I had intended to do a light steeping this morning, but got distracted and ended up with my usual pu-erh black tar. Yummy.

I noticed this morning that the leaves here, even in a very large open vessel, don’t all completely open in four minutes. But I know from past experience that more than 4 minutes gets bitter and impacts later steepings. This oolong may be a better candidate for rinsing than my pu-erh.

This oolong is a lot toastier than the TeaG one I have right now, which is a lot tippy-er. These leaves are all chocolate brown, whereas the Formosa Superior Choice has the whole spectrum of white, green, and shades of brown.

This tea makes me realize that, come next autumn, I will have taken a sufficiently long break from lapsangs, that I am going to want to put some real smoke back into my rotation. I may even go back to my old habit of creating my own tea blends. I used to do a 60/40 of pu-erh and lapsang, but I may try a 50/25/25 with pu-erh, this oolong and lapsang. If anyone cares, my lapsang of choice is Upton Tea’s “Black Dragon” which is a strong, imposing tea without being overwhelmingly “meaty” (doesn’t make people think of bacon while brewing).

By the way, I learned through a friend that Omni Tea is just re-selling Rishi Tea, so in the future I will probably buy direct from Rishi and hope that solves the shipping speed problem.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

In trying to listen to fellow Steepsters, I prepared this today using a smaller pot, more leaf, rinsed the leaves for about 10 seconds, and then only steeped for one minute instead of my usual 15-30.

Certainly nothing wrong with the results, but nothing came out here that blew me away or made me feel like I’ve been misguided all along. I think these elaborate preparations may have value with real, true, aged, single garden type pu-erh, but I doubt very many of us are drinking such things very often.

I’m currently traveling, and away from my tea cabinet at home. This is always a trying time. Hotels often provide tea bags, but rarely ones worth drinking.

But, at the keynote last night we pocketed a few Mighty Leaf tea bags which we were happily gulping down while listening to a paper on why it is important for anthropologists to take the topic of religion seriously in Japan.

Tea bag tea, no matter how premium, is still tea bag tea. I don’t care what anyone else says, it just isn’t as good as loose tea. Heck, even loose tea, once placed into a tea bag, doesn’t steep as well.

But if I have to drink bagged tea, and right now I do, I’m glad we have Mighty Leaf.